God-free living in a God-heavy world

Category Archives: Liars for Jesus

The Texas Freedom Network had a post about our dear creationist friend today as well. In the comments, someone who has spoken with Dr. Shormann previously had this to say:

I got into a comment exchange with Shormann when his fellow creationist and preacher pal, Marty, was running for [State Board of Education] (and won, dagnabbit!) and without a doubt Shormann is among the most dishonest creationists I’ve run across in decades of following these creeps.

I even pulled up a paper he wrote studying the Brazos river for his PhD because it conflicted with his childish false dichotomy of “historical versus experimental” science. I pointed out that a plot he published, pretty much a straight line, indicated that the river would have had a certain temperature even thought they didn’t have a measurement for that year and he replied, “We can never know because we can’t go back in time” or some such BS.

And Dr. Shormann continues to play innocent on his blog, pretending to be puzzled that I say he’s deceptive. Actually… you know what? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just isn’t rational enough to realize that he’s being deceptive.

Hi Mike,I would encourage you to read the paper yourself, rather than base your conclusions on what somebody else said. The paper was received by Aquatic Geochemistry 8/23/11, accepted on 12/29/11, and published in 2012. It says this right at the top of the paper, read it here:http://hypoxia.tamu.edu/files/2012_dimarco.pdf

As far as funding, I payed for some of the gas and food for my boat, TAMU paid for the rest. About half of the data from the August 2007 trip to the Brazos River plume was collected off my boat. My crew consisted of a TAMU oceanographer and several homeschool students, who went on to present their research at the Science and Engineering Fair of Houston.

Here’s more info on the funding sources, copied directly from the acknowledgements: “This research was supported by a Rapid Response Award by Texas Sea Grant College Program (No. 404538). Partial funding was through a grant to S. DiMarco (NOAA-CSCOR NA06NOS4780198), contribution number NGOMEX-132, and the TAMU Department of Oceanography.Support for the stable isotope analyses was provided by a grant from Texas’ Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program (No. 010366-0053-2007).”

Mike, please explain where I was lying. Also, do you have a science degree?

Oh, how cute.

Mike, please explain where I was lying.

That’s easy: right about where he said “my most recent work was in 2012 (Texas Coastal Hypoxia Linked to Brazos River Discharge as Revealed by Oxygen Isotopes).” The paper does not represent any research he did, but rather the work of a team. “The data was collected off my boat” and “my crew collected the data” does not equal “I did the research outlined in this paper.”

Note to Dr. Shormann: if you don’t want to be seen as dishonest, the proper way to respond to someone’s incorrect claims is to actually respond to them, not delete their post and make it look like it never existed.

And what do my scientific qualifications have anything to do with him being deceptive? Talk about a red herring. I don’t need to be a scientist to know that his only contribution to that paper was facilitation, not research.

And now, for a moment of seriousness. For a (hopefully small) number of people, today was supposed to be the day that they’d be instantly whisked away to a place of eternal peace and joy.

Instead, today is the day that they learn the hard truth so may other doomsday cults have learned: Placing your faith in the fantastic (and incredibly dubious) claims made by charismatic preachers who say that they’re going to save the world is a mistake.

But rather than criticize them, this gives us all an opportunity to glimpse the flaws in human thinking and learn important lessons about ourselves.

Over on The Atheist Experience blog there’s a post with a link to a very … interesting letter from Mike Huckabee, soliciting donations for a new organization he’s involved with. In the letter – which I strongly urge you to read – he mentions the threat we face from Islamic radicals, but then warns his constituents of “an even greater menace [that] threatens to destroy us from the inside out” – “a re-energized Left here in our midst that is working harder than ever to drive out God and ALL MENTION of religious faith from America’s public life.”

That’s right – Mike Huckabee, a Christian living in a majority Christian nation, wants to warn his fellow Christians that, somehow, evil godless liberal atheist scum are going to subvert their will and override the entire democratic system.Continue reading →

There’s a trend I’ve noticed, and I’m surely not the first: So often when a preacher makes some great declaration about the future, he seems to be in it for the money. Oh, he’ll put on a good show of being earnest, declaring that God has spoken to him and given him a message that the big guy needs to get across to his True Believers.

Wait a minute, they mentioned Hitler? As an atheist? Wow, that’s a surprise. I’m sure it would surprise him, too, seeing how he was a devout Catholic. Not that his religious beliefs are even relevant. Most of the atrocities carried out in the Holocaust were done by thousands of other good old-fashioned, God-fearing German citizens. Unless, of course, de Valk is insinuating that each and every person in Germany at the time was an atheist, I think he would do well to avoid mention of Hitler.Continue reading →